A while back, my vegetarian daughter showed me a video of a conscious cow flipped upside-down and hung from a hook for butchering.

Somehow, the bullet-to-the-brain juncture of the assembly line had failed to knock her out. The cow looked terrified and anguished, of course, as she lifted her head in a cry. Worse, she looked betrayed – like, “Hey, what are you doing to me?”

Yet watch it, I do – again and again. That traumatic image continues to replay itself in my mind.

When I first learned of the footage surreptitiously captured at Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. in Chino, I vowed it would never enter my internal theater. However, reading a Web site news story about the record recall of beef, I inadvertently clicked on the damning video.

Why did my tears make me feel silly and histrionic? Why shouldn’t we all be sad and angry about the outright torture of these benign beasts that do nothing but serve us – so that we can serve them on our dinner plates?

It’s been drilled into our practicality: Humans are the top of the food chain. We deserve cheap pot roast, whatever it takes to get it.

And how about this justification? If it weren’t for people, those cows never would’ve been born in the first place. Yep, they owe us, all right – for churning them out like widgets on a conveyer belt.

The inconvenient truth is that cows are sentient creatures with emotions and attachments and pleasure and fear and pain.

Speaking of inconvenient truths: The boundless proliferation of cattle to satiate our massive overconsumption of beef produces greenhouse gases that contribute more to global warming than – ruminate this stat – all the planes, trains and automobiles on Earth. Plus, the torrent of waste constantly threatens our water and crops. I still shy away from raw spinach after 2006’s E. coli crisis.

In this latest heart-rending video, a forklift driver pushes a weak, moaning cow – even carelessly backing over her leg. Imagine a cherished dog or cat in her place. While we unite to condemn Michael Vick’s sadistic abuse of pit bulls, such horrors occur to cattle every day.

This is not an isolated problem solved by the shutdown of Hallmark/Westland – nor by the arrest of a hired-hand following orders.

It’s no surprise that slaughterhouses see perpetual turnover of their minimum-wage employees. Surely this gruesome work robs a piece of the soul.

The tragedy of food animals belongs not just to them, but also to the invisible laborers who make our steaks and hamburgers possible.

Oh, it’s such a bloody mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.

Raising cattle, pigs and chickens humanely requires the space they once enjoyed on family farms and ranches. Obviously, that translates into higher prices at the supermarket – but at what price low prices?

I propose a slogan regarding all meats: Pay double, eat half, break even. When it comes to health, less is more, anyway.

Perhaps naively, I predict this shocking expos will lead to a renaissance. By treating the animals we so depend upon with dignity and compassion, we can reclaim a hefty portion of our collective soul.

Susan Christian Goulding’s column appears Saturdays. She is an award-winning writer and freelance journalist. She can be contacted by e-mail at susangoulding@aol.com.

After majoring in journalism at the University of Texas, Susan Christian Goulding got her start as a copy editor and reporter at the (late, great) Los Angeles Herald Examiner. She then worked at the (late, great) Santa Monica Outlook and the Daily Breeze as a features editor, writer and columnist. She moved to the Orange County bureau of the Los Angeles Times as a features and business writer. After that five-year stint, she worked as a correspondent for People magazine and a regular freelancer for Readers Digest while raising her two kids, Erin and Matt. During this time, she also wrote a weekly column for the Daily Breeze. Next, she gave up all possibility of free time and earned a teaching credential and masters at UCI. She taught English for four often rewarding and always challenging years in Compton, then at LMU and El Camino College. Missing journalism, Goulding circled back to her original career last year, joining the Orange County Register as a reporter covering Tustin, Seal Beach and Los Alamitos. She also enjoys her return to column writing for the newspaper's OC Home magazine.

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